To the next generation of spatial data infrastructures.

A new vision to the production, management and distribution of spatial data where grid technology joins geographical data inventory and query systems, carried out collaboratively with best-known open source projects.

Terradue works to exploit and strengthen best practices in distributed data processing, archiving and discovery for Earth sciences, finance and medicine. Our emphasis is on the immediate delivery of robust operational systems while keeping a concrete roadmap to build the next generation data processing and storage systems.

The new EU-funded project D4Science-II ('Data infrastructure ecosystem for science') has held its kick-off meeting from 13 to 16 October in Pisa, Italy. It is set to establish 'virtual research environments' that will offer significantly enhanced services to scientists without high development and maintenance costs.

The project is a continuation of the EU-funded GEANT, EGEE, DILIGENT and D4Science projects, all aimed to establish networking, grid-based and data-centric e-infrastructures with the ultimate goal of providing scientists with virtual research environments that can generate and disseminate unlimited scientific and technical knowledge.

Virtual research environments are frameworks that allow research to take place digitally, enabling researchers to handle enormous amounts of information and data. The frameworks consist of a number of services and systems that allow for the simultaneous operation of many different components of the research process.

D4Science-ll is funded with EUR 4.3 million under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). It will be led by ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) and scientific coordination will be carried out by CNR, Italy's National Research Council. Partners include the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The D4Science-II Ecosystem will include among others, the GENESI-DR and DRIVER repository e-Infrastructures, and important thematic repositories maintained by international organizations, e.g., INSPIRE and AquaMaps. The project will create Virtual Research Environments offering significantly enhanced services to scientist without incurring high development and maintenance costs.

In this project the Terradue team leads and participates in tasks aiming to provide interoperability solutions between Earth Science Communities, D4Science-II and Community Specific Resources Implementation needs for the interoperability. Terradue is in a strong position to guarantee the success of D4Science-II as it has a deep knowledge of the technologies adopted within GENESI-DR and a strong background in EO services development and operations.

Terradue was awarded a contract with the European Space Agency to evaluate and develop a Cloud Interface on the Earth Observation Grid. In the frame of the EO G-POD (EO Grid Processing on-Demand) project for Terradue will provide an operational interface to storage and computing resources available on the Amazon Cloud. [...]

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is at risk of partly breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula as the ice bridge that connects it to Charcot and Latady Islands looks set to collapse. The beginning of what appears to be the demise of the ice bridge began this week when new rifts forming along its centre axis resulted in a large block of ice breaking away. [...]

The workshop follows last years’ successful events covering Grid and e-Collaboration technologies and standards, highly relevant for today’s rapidly evolving e-Science infrastructures dedicated to Earth Science and Space applications. The technology focus in this year’s workshop is on digital repositories, but also on presenting updates on recent e-Infrastructure developments, reviewing the state of the art. [...]